Month: December 2015

A new background! We took this photo last weekend just before going into our first Christmas celebration at Aaron’s dad and stepmom’s house. They live high up on a hill and have an incredible view from their driveway.

We celebrated Christmas four times with different members of our family, and each time felt extra-special because we experienced such an outpouring of love and excitement for our daughter. 

Shortly after Thanksgiving, we sent our baby-registry link to our parents so they could choose gifts from it if they wanted to. Well, those grandparents-to-be sure are excited, because we received so many generous gifts! Santa brought everything from big items — like a car seat, high chair, and swing — to safety must-haves — like baby gates and a video monitoring system — and of course plenty of toys, books, clothes, and more. It was like a pre-baby-shower shower! We are overwhelmed, so grateful, and working hard on our thank-you notes. 🙂

Luckily, the only time I cried was during our first celebration with Aaron’s dad’s side of the family. We were in the middle of opening presents when I pulled out an adorable pink onesie and just started sobbing in front of about 10 people. Those were the very first gifts we’d received for our baby, and seeing them just made everything feel so real. Gotta love those pregnancy hormones!

Our next celebration was hosting my dad and brother at our house on Christmas Eve — or what we called Christmas Evie, since she received the most gifts out of anyone by far.

(Yup, I’m wearing the same top. My “festive maternity top” selection is quite limited.)

I really need to look into finding an adult version of this activity gym; it converts into a ball pit, and what could be more fun than that??

Thank you so much to my dad and brother for their incredibly generous gifts, and more importantly, their wonderful company on Christmas Eve!

And thank you to Aaron for making our delicious dinner of glazed ham, roasted potatoes, biscuits, and salad. Actually, I made the salad. 🙂

Aaron and I opened our gifts to each other first thing on Christmas morning. I got him a pair of Ugg slippers he wanted, plus some cookware he’d been coveting from Crate & Barrel because he is truly obsessed with cooking/baking and I do everything I can to encourage it. 🙂

Aaron got me two pairs of my favorite cozy socks — I’d been begging for a replacement pair, because they’re the greatest ever and I’ve worn holes in mine — and he also booked me a prenatal massage in our hotel room during our babymoon in February! YESSSSSS!!!

Next, we were off to Aaron’s mom and stepdad’s house for Christmas brunch. Santa had been busy!

We enjoyed a fantastic brunch my mother-in-law Greta made of blueberry French toast casserole (with challah bread!), egg nests, and fresh fruit. So good!

One funny moment we had while exchanging gifts was when Aaron’s stepdad Mark opened this sweater that Aaron had chosen for him, and then Aaron immediately opened one very similar to it that Greta and Mark had gotten for him! So cute.

I was thrilled to receive what I had asked Santa for: a super-cozy pair of gloves and a cold-weather headband. If you have some Christmas money to spend and need to bundle up for the winter, I highly recommend those!

Thank you, Greta and Mark, for an amazing Christmas morning and so many wonderful gifts!

It was very special to have Grandpa O with us, too, as he recently moved into a nearby assisted living home after having lived independently to the age of 89.

Next, we went to my mom and stepdad’s house for our final celebration and Christmas dinner. My mom had all my favorite holiday snacks ready upon our arrival: fancy cheese and crackers, deviled eggs, Ruffles with sour-cream-and-onion dip, and more. A pregnant lady’s dream come true!

After exchanging gifts, Aaron cozied up by the fire like a distinguished gentleman in his new sweater…

…and Don modeled his spiffy herringbone vest. 

We capped off the day with a delicious homemade dinner of a rib roast, mashed potatoes, green beans, and biscuits, and with my brother teaching my mom how to play the super-violent video game he works on at his job, which was quite entertaining. Thank you, Mom and Don, for having us and for all the fantastic gifts!

Whew, I’m exhausted just recapping all that Christmas goodness. Oh, one last thing! One gift we gave each set of grandparents-to-be was a custom ornament made by our friend Katie, who recently started a calligraphy business called Ink & Sable.

They turned out so beautifully. Thank you, Katie!

I went to the gym a whopping one time this week, the day after Christmas. It felt really good to walk and lift weights after a whole lot of sitting and eating. My weekly at-home weigh-in indicated I gained 2.5 pounds since last week. I believe it!

There is an elusive front view of the belly, which is not nearly as cute as the side view. So, yeah, we’ll just stick with side views, huh?

After last week’s weird resurgence of exhaustion, I felt back to normal in that sense this week, and made it through multiple movies without falling asleep! Aaron and I saw the new Star Wars movie thanks to a free screening his company did, and we watched a fantastic movie at home called Chef (watch the trailer). I can’t shut up about how good it was. It’s on streaming Netflix, so go watch it now!!!

My intense thirst has dissipated, so that’s nice. Hunger is about the same as ever — pretty normal.

I’m still just feeling really good, with no major complaints. I anticipated the worst while imagining what pregnancy would be like, but I’ve had it very easy so far. Even my first-trimester nausea and exhaustion weren’t that bad, compared to what many women experience. I do imagine the third trimester will suck, though, so I’m trying to enjoy this easy phase.

The best parts of every day are when I feel our baby kicking. I feel her every day now, multiple times a day, and Aaron is often able to feel her from outside my belly, too. My mom even got to feel a kick on Christmas! 

I usually feel her during the quieter moments, like when I first wake up, when I’m watching TV after dinner, and when I’m falling asleep. It’s not a jabby feeling anymore; more like a hearty thumping. It makes me smile and feel so incredibly excited to meet her.

It finally feels like it’s no longer just Aaron and me, but the three of us — a family.

This is our holiday card that I was stressing about getting in the mail last week. We used a tripod to take the photo after my usual weekly picture, and then printed it at Aaron’s office print shop for super-cheap. Whatever works!

That’s all for this week; I’ll be back next year with another update. Have a safe and happy new year, everyone! We’ll be on the couch sipping sparkling cider and falling asleep well before midnight, I’m sure. Nothing sounds better, at this point!

We are officially past the halfway mark! I keep saying that it feels like the next ~19 weeks will take so long, but everyone assures me they will fly by and our baby will be here before we know it. I’m so torn between wanting the time to pass quickly and being mindful of enjoying the last few months Aaron and I have all to ourselves!

In case you’ve forgotten what I looked like before being visibly pregnant — I know I have — here’s a fun comparison. My face is definitely filling out more, in addition to my belly!

After our 20-week anatomy scan last week, we saw our doctor for a regular monthly checkup at exactly 21 weeks, and she said I’ve gained 9 pounds overall. About a pound of that is the baby — the ultrasound tech estimated during our scan that she weighed 14 oz. — and this week my pregnancy app says she’s about 10.5 inches long. We somehow forgot to ask how long she actually is!

Healthy pregnancy weight gain for a woman with a normal pre-pregnancy BMI is 25-35 pounds overall, so I’m feeling good about where I am — although I’m being more mindful about how many treats I eat, since my doctor also gave me the glucose-tolerance beverage I’ll need to drink before my next appointment to test for gestational diabetes. I’m still enjoying all the deliciousness of the holiday season, but not eating dessert after every meal anymore. 

A few fun things that happened last week that I didn’t mention were that we picked up a Baby Einstein jumper/activity center thing for $20 from our neighbors, and we finally bought a changing table/dresser!

Aaron had been checking Craigslist every day for the past several weeks looking for the perfect one, and he finally hit the jackpot last weekend! We love that the top railing can be removed once we’re done using it as a changing table, and it has drawers for clothes but also open space for quickly grabbing diapers, wipes, etc. It doesn’t match the crib perfectly in terms of color, but we’re not Pinterest-picky. We paid $115, bringing our grand total for nursery furniture to $215 ($50 for the crib, $50 for the glider).

We already have some artwork hung, too, as you can see. On the far right is a print of Kermit the frog riding a bike, which we saw in a Seattle art-shop window a year-and-a-half ago and Aaron is obsessed with. Above the changing table are four of Ryan Berkley’s animal portraits that we bought from Etsy as a mutual wedding-anniversary gift. I fell in love with these quirky portraits when I saw them at a gift shop in Portland several months ago, and Aaron thought they were just as hilarious as I did. It was so hard to choose our four favorites!

Side note: We currently use the nursery as an office, and we have nowhere else to put Aaron’s desk and computer, so we’re leaving them in there. Baby’s first iMac! I also have a ton of crap in those plastic drawers that I need to go through. That’ll be exciting.

Anyway, Aaron has collected those bike prints over the past few years with the intention of hanging them in a nursery someday. That day has arrived!

And here’s the other side of the room, currently home to the glider, side table, carseat and Christmas presents!

We’re not going to paint the room, since we live in a rental and don’t want to put in the effort of nicely painting the super-tall walls (it has vaulted ceilings) when we could very well move in the next year or two, so I’m hoping to add some fun color via curtains, crib bedding, and maybe a rug. We’ll start on all that after the holidays!

Another fun purchase: Aaron found this amazing, huge teddy bear on our local buy/sell Facebook group for $15 and we had to have it!!!

Even this photo doesn’t properly show the scale. If you stand him upright next to me, he’s about as tall as I am… which is 5′6″. His name is Frank, and he’s currently hanging out on our couch for us to snuggle with, as he is so amazingly soft and comfortable.

I also had to spring for a maternity coat, as the long, puffy coat I currently wear clearly isn’t going to fit through my entire pregnancy. It’s already getting uncomfortably snug through my chest and belly, so I decided to take the plunge on a different one before I got to the point of being unable to zip it!

This one from A Pea in the Pod is pretty similar to my existing coat and has all five-star reviews, but I didn’t want to pay $200 for a coat I’ll only wear for a few more months. Miraculously, I found the exact coat in my size on eBay for $69, and Aaron — being the eBay expert, in addition to the Craigslist expert — won it for me! The description says the owner only used it for the last three weeks of her pregnancy and had it dry-cleaned afterward, so I hope it’s pretty much brand-new. In any event, I’m happy to have it for less than half of what it costs new.

Enough about stuff; how am I doing? Perfectly fine! The most common question I’m asked is, “How are you feeling?” and I have no exciting answer for it. I am noticing it’s a little more difficult to stand up from being seated, and I catch myself sighing with relief as I sit down. It just feels so good to sit down and get comfy.

A bit of exhaustion has crept back in this past week, too. Aaron and I tried to watch the first three Star Wars movies this weekend in preparation for seeing the new one, and I cannot stay awake to watch one all the way through — even in the middle of the day. On Saturday, I fell asleep from 1:30-3:30 in the afternoon, and again around 8:30 before waking up on the couch at midnight to go up to bed and sleep until 7:30 Sunday morning. It’s almost like I’m sick, but I feel perfectly fine. Just the nature of baby-growin’, I guess.

Oh, and I’ve been thirsty, thirsty, thirsty. I’ve always been a big water-drinker, but starting this past week, I can’t seem to get enough.

I guess I do have an answer to how I’m feeling after all: tired and thirsty!

I only went to the gym twice this week, as I found myself stressing about getting our holiday cards in the mail and dedicated a few evenings to doing that rather than working out. I’d been hoping the latest episode of the Serial podcast would motivate me to get on the treadmill, but no such luck!

That’s all for this week. I’m so excited for Christmas this year, as I’ve pretty much only requested baby stuff and can’t wait to see what’ll be under the tree!

I hope you all have a wonderful, safe, and happy holiday! Please drink lots of wine for me! 🙂

This was the week we finally found out the sex of our baby! Our 20-week anatomy scan was at 8 a.m. on Thursday, and I woke up feeling really nervous. As I washed my face, I broke into an intense Carrie Mathison-style cry.

(If you haven’t been watching Homeland this season, you need to get on that. It’s fantastic.)

Anyway, I haven’t been super emotional during my pregnancy so far, but it hit me that we were about to “meet” our baby for the first time — that is, we would not only see the baby again, but finally know if “it” was a he or a she. The whole thing would all feel more so much more real after finding out just that little bit more about our kiddo.

Then I went downstairs and sat on the couch with Aaron and cried some more as he looked on in absolute bewilderment. It was hard to explain the intense combination of happiness, nervousness, and anticipation I was experiencing.

Once we got to the hospital and checked in for our appointment, I lost it again when the receptionist told us the power was out due to high winds, the hospital was running on generators, and they may not be able to do the ultrasound.

Nooooo! I was already on the edge emotionally, and on top of that, I really had to pee since they told me to come to the appointment with a full bladder. All we could do was sit in the waiting area while they figured out whether or not they could do the ultrasound. It should be noted that we stared at a TV that played calming scenes — cows grazing in a field; snow geese flying around; a tropical jungle — as we waited. Surely if that TV worked, the ultrasound machine would work!

We were eventually called back by an ultrasound technician and she assured us we could do the scan. Apparently the receptionist didn’t know what she was talking about; the only thing they couldn’t do was use the internet, and they didn’t need Wi-Fi to peek inside my uterus. Oh, and I could also pee if I wanted to, did I want to? YES, PLEASE.

I was still weepy as the tech got all set up. She was so nice and assured us she’d talk us through everything.

Of course, the real purpose of this scan is to look at every inch of the baby and capture lots of images to ensure that everything is healthy and growing properly. We looked at the baby’s heart, abdomen, brain, face, arms, hands, legs, feet — you name it. The tech was very reassuring and pointed out all the healthy things she was seeing (which was everything, thank goodness!).

Her first attempt at peeking between the baby’s legs was unsuccessful, but she went back later, toward the end of the scan, and finally caught a good glimpse.

Our sweet little baby is definitely… A GIRL!!!

She’s doing the Little Rascals wave, with her hand below her chin. Heyyyy!

We were THRILLED to find out our baby is a girl, but we can’t say it was a complete surprise. 🙂 Right after our 13-week genetic screening ultrasound in October — when the ultrasound tech wouldn’t comment on the sex — we immediately had an appointment with the doctor who will be doing our delivery, and the nurse who took my blood pressure and stuff before the appointment offered to go ask the tech what her unofficial opinion was. Her exact words were: “Let me go see if I can get it out of her!” She came back about five minutes later with: “She thinks it’s probably a girl!”

Aaron and I still had a few minutes alone in the room waiting for the doctor, and we fully danced around the room and hugged and got all teary-eyed. Of course we would have been happy either way, but — just being honest — we both wanted a girl. I think a lot of people are surprised by this, but Aaron in particular really, really wanted a girl!

We definitely took that 13-week prediction with a grain of salt and had plenty of doubts during the weeks between the two ultrasounds — especially since so many people guessed we were having a boy! I was fully prepared to receive boy news and switch my mentality from picturing life with a little girl to picturing life with a little boy. That wasn’t the case, though, and it just feels right to know that the little girl we’ve been dreaming about is really on her way.

Speaking of that little girl — she has a name. We decided on it long ago, and we’ve chosen to share it now because we’re so happy with it and don’t plan to change it for any reason. Also, it’s becoming quite a popular name and I’ve been terrified that one of the many, many pregnant couples we know will choose it and then think we copied them (which is sort of dumb, I know, but clearly I’m not thinking 100% rationally… see the Carrie Mathison cry above).

Our daughter’s first name will be Evelyn, after professional cyclist and Olympian Evelyn Stevens, whom Aaron admires and I’ve come to admire after learning about her. This video does a beautiful job of explaining what she’s all about; I love the idea of being able to show this to our daughter whenever she asks where her name came from, so she can see that she’s named after a very brave and strong woman.

Her middle name will be June, which is pretty much just because Aaron wants to call her Junebug. 🙂 We both liked the name and it sounds nice with Evelyn.

I plan to call her Evie (pronounced with a long E sound, like Eee-vie, rather than Eh-vie) when she’s little, but who knows! My parents have a ton of weird nicknames for me (like Doodle Bug) that have nothing to do with my actual name, so there’s no telling what we’ll come up with when we meet her and get to know her personality.

And whenever she has an opinion either way, she can go by Evelyn, Evie, or whatever it is she feels comfortable with.

Although we’re already calling her by name privately and amongst family and friends — and her name is obviously no secret — I’ll probably stick with referring to her as the baby, her, she, etc. on this blog until she arrives; just my preference.

Anyway, that’s all the exciting news this week! A few more fun things happened that I’ll just lump in with next week’s update, because what could be more exciting than what I’ve already shared?? NOTHING! Our little girl is growing strong and looks perfectly healthy, and we couldn’t be more thrilled!!!

Happy December! 

I celebrated by finally getting my hair cut for the first time since early August. I went super-short with my last cut so I could go a long time (by short-hair standards) in between cuts. It is possible to be lazy with short hair, thank goodness! 

I also went a bit darker (at home), which my doctor said was perfectly safe as long as I did it in a well-ventilated space. I stayed away from hair dye during the first trimester, as that is when I was most paranoid about doing anything “wrong,” but definitely talk to your doctor about what is safe for you.

It’s hilarious how different the answers are when I Google, “Is _______ safe while pregnant?” and when I ask my doctor. Google pretty much always leads me to random message boards where people claim that ________ will totally ruin everything, and my doctor pretty much always tells me, “Oh yeah, that’s perfectly fine!” Examples: sleeping on my back, taking a certain brand of allergy pill, eating pasteurized brie. This was all great news to hear because: no matter how hard I try to fall asleep and stay asleep on my side, I always wake up on my back; both sets of my in-laws have cats that I’m super allergic to; brie makes me really, really happy.

Again, talk to your doctor… and don’t read random message boards! I probably would have worried a lot less throughout this pregnancy if I had stuck with that policy throughout.

Not that all the worry is over. It’s never over, I guess. But we’re reallyyyyy looking forward to our 20-week ultrasound to get reassurance that everything is still going well!

I continue to feel completely normal, other than getting tired around 8:00 each night and needing to be in bed by 9:00. I don’t mind, though, because I loooove sleeping and will happily take as much sleep as I can get before the kiddo arrives. I slept for 11 hours Friday night to Saturday morning — 9 p.m. to 8 a.m. — and it was glorious.

My big victory this week was reintroducing salads to my lunches after a long hiatus, and having three days in a row where my breakfast, lunch, and dinner all included vegetables! I know I mostly post pictures of delicious desserts and treats on Instagram, but I am really trying to eat healthy most of the time so I can feed the baby good nutrients and also enjoy a good snack now and then.

Aaron and I made these amazing chicken enchiladas for dinner on Tuesday, and I was obsessed with the leftovers all week. 

He sauteed extra onions and green peppers to add to the filling, so each enchilada was huge and almost made a meal in itself for me. I’d bring one to work for lunch, then have a salad an hour or two later once I had more room in my stomach.

We still have leftover filling and tortillas in the freezer; we just need to buy more enchilada sauce and cheese at some point so I can continue the love affair. ❤

I only made it to the gym twice this week, on Wednesday and Saturday. I have no good excuse, really. I did my usual walking routine for 35 minutes each day, plus lifted weights on Saturday. 

I’m really starting to test the stretching capacity of my regular workout clothes. They still “fit” — like, they’re not uncomfortable or obscene-looking — but when I change out of them, the effect is similar to popping open a can of Pillsbury biscuits: everything kind of oozes out once the pressure has been released. Sorry, so graphic, but so true.

I think I’m still a few weeks away from buying new workout clothes, but my weight gain is definitely ramping up, so we’ll see. I gained two pounds from week 17 to 18, and 1 pound from 18 to 19. I’ll have an official weigh-in at the doctor this coming week to see what my total gain is so far, but I think I’m in the neighborhood of 7-8 pounds. That is crazy to me, because I feel like I can easily pack that on during an indulgent, weeklong vacation. Pregnancy is weird.

OK, it’s my bedtime, so I’m going to wrap this up real quick-like. We got a cute little Christmas tree this week, and decorated it and our mantel in approximately 15 minutes.

We’ll have to put that thing up on a table or something next year, as we’ll have a grabby little baby chilling with us. I also want to get three personalized stockings for next year, as we currently use two generic hand-me-down stockings from Aaron’s mom. Perhaps I’ll take advantage of a post-Christmas sale, if I remember?

We also made sweet gingerbread houses with our friends Sarah and Chris.

I thought we were going to be using plain gingerbread rectangles, but oh no, they had used gingerbread-house molds to make actual front, back, side, and roof pieces. Deluxe! No comment on the amount of candy we ate compared to the amount that made it onto our house.

We also drove to Portland and back in one day so Aaron could take advantage of a Rapha sample sale for hugely discounted bike clothes and accessories. We spent a total of five hours driving, one hour of waiting in line to get into the sale, and two hours in the store (which was packed full of people), including one hour of just waiting in line to buy his stuff — but it was all worth it to go to Salt & Straw afterward and eat the best ice cream of all time, ever. That’s the reason I went. And also to be a supportive wife or something.

That’s all for this week! I’ll be back next week with the big news from our 20-week ultrasound! Or maybe I’ll get too excited and share it on Instagram first!

Do these stripes make me look chubby? Good!

When we first started taking these weekly photos, it was so hard to fight the urge to suck in my belly, which is what I’ve done all my life whenever I knew someone was taking a photo of me. OK, maybe not ALL my life (as seen below), but at least since I was old enough to be aware of wanting to look a certain way in photos.

It’s weird — in a good way — when the whole point of taking a photo is to show your belly getting larger. It means the baby is growing big and strong, and I can have less anxiety in between doctor appointments!

Speaking of that… I am always calm and reassured for about a week after hearing the baby’s heartbeat or seeing it on an ultrasound, and then my worrying kicks in again. This week, I didn’t feel any jabs or flips for a few days and got really anxious. Then I’m pretty sure I felt the baby move while watching the Apple Cup on Friday (probably doing a celebratory dance, since mommy’s Huskies embarrassed daddy’s Cougars so badly), and I was relieved once again.

Visible belly growth in our weekly photos and those tiny little jabs are the only things keeping me sane right now. Only TWO MORE WEEKS until our 20-week ultrasound, when we’ll get to see every inch of our kiddo and find out if he/she is a he or she!

Speaking of THAT… I crushed Aaron’s dreams around 13 weeks when I finally decided I couldn’t get on board with the boy name he loved so much. I was almost there, but when I really pictured calling our baby that name, it just didn’t feel right. So, we went back to the drawing board for boy names and came up with a list of three names that we liked well enough, but nothing that we LOVED like we love our girl name.

Friday night, I went hunting for boy names again, and gave Aaron my laptop to continue looking while I got some dinner. Suddenly, he came into the kitchen and said a name… and I LOVED it. And he LOVES it. So now we have a boy name!!!

This makes me even more excited to find out the baby’s sex since he/she will actually have a name the moment we find out, either way.

We didn’t make any baby-related purchases this week, but we did put some work into our Amazon baby registry so our parents can refer to it for Christmas gifts, if they like. I don’t really want anything for myself this year, so I’m happy to just get baby stuff!

Before I jump into Christmas, I guess I should talk about Thanksgiving! The three-day work week leading up to Thanksgiving was quite busy and stressful, as my company has Black Friday sales to rival the best of ‘em and I had lots of clothes and jewelry to write about. I’m just glad to not be on the sales-floor side of retail anymore. Thanks, OfficeMax and J.Crew, for providing enough horrifying Black Friday work experiences to last a lifetime.

Anyway, I got through the work week and was so happy to have four whole days off! I didn’t work out at all Monday through Wednesday, so I tried to at least get a healthy start on Thanksgiving by walking on the treadmill.

My Instagram feed was full of photos from everyone’s turkey-trot adventures, so I did my version. It was more of a gobble wobble, but I covered 5K in 45 minutes, plus a little extra distance thanks to a 5-minute cool-down. I also snapped a pic of my belly from above, as this is the most it has ever stuck out BEFORE eating Thanksgiving dinner. 🙂

We spent the afternoon/evening at Aaron’s mom and stepdad’s house and enjoyed all the traditional, delicious fixins’. I was determined to go off the rails this year in terms of eating, but the cruel irony of pregnancy is that my stomach holds less food because a little baby friend is squishing it. So, I ate a completely normal amount of food for dinner and only had a tiny bit of room left for seconds and dessert. I’ll get ‘em next year!

Black Friday was a super-lazy day spent watching the aforementioned Apple Cup at Aaron’s best friend Adam’s house. Adam and his wife, Kim — who have a one-year-old son, Josh — are expecting identical twins (!!) just a few weeks after our kiddo, and already have two boy names and two girl names picked out — hence why we revisited the boy-name issue on Friday night. We got plenty of parenting tips from them, and also stalked their baby gear and nursery setup for inspiration.

By the way, I fully expect Kim and I to be in labor at the same time in side-by-side hospital rooms, since twins tend to come a few weeks early. We have the same doctor, so she can just jump back and forth as needed. IT COULD HAPPEN!

I got back on the workout train on Saturday and did 30 minutes of treadmill walking + a 5-minute cool-down for 2.25 miles total, plus 20 minutes of weights. My arms were burnnnnning, but after holding Josh and realizing how much strength is needed to carry a baby around, I know it’s totally worth it.

We had dinner out with my dad and brother Saturday night, where I undid the exercise with delicious fish ‘n chips and pizza. And a skillet cookie. With ice cream. 

And on Sunday, I did the same 30 + 5 walking workout, skipped the weights, and then ate more pizza (plus brownies!) while watching the Seahawks game at my mom’s house. We won! And I won, because pizza and brownies were involved.

I swear I eat vegetables sometimes. Mostly in the form of green smoothies.

But only when brownies are looming in the background and whispering to me, “Soon.”